So... there seems to have been a massive mixup with Star Wars: Destiny ordering on Amazon. I got two starter sets ($15 each) and 3 booster packs ($3 each add-on item). I received a giant box in the mail which was confusing. It looks like I received 3 boxes of booster packs and the two starter sets.
What are your 10 final games? Do we need to have a game night where we play for however long it takes to carry you over the finish line?
The last 10 games:
Arkwright
Rails of New England
Power Grid
Caverna
Terra Mystica
Brass
Speculation
Cosmic Encounter
Primordial Soup
Baseball Highlights 2045
Arkwright is a new acquisition so it shouldn't be hard to play it once. I'll probably end up playing Baseball Highlights sometime this month with Anthony. Of the remainder, the ones giving me a significant itch that cannot be scratched for lack of the right group are Rails of New England, Brass, and Cosmic Encounter. I've passed up so many games of Power Grid and Terra Mystica that I'm not entirely convinced I need to keep them.
YOU COULD HAVE BEEN IN OUR MIDNIGHT Cosmic Game a few weeks ago Pence but you chose sleep!
So taking out Baseball Highlights 2045, Terra Mystica, and Power Grid that leaves Rails, Caverna, Speculation, Cosmic Encounter, Primordial Soup. We could probably kick out 2 this weekend in Doylestown. You might get people into a game of Cosmic Encounter in Games keep. I remember someone at Games Keep was looking for a game of Caverna.
So... there seems to have been a massive mixup with Star Wars: Destiny ordering on Amazon. I got two starter sets ($15 each) and 3 booster packs ($3 each add-on item). I received a giant box in the mail which was confusing. It looks like I received 3 boxes of booster packs and the two starter sets.
I now have 108 booster packs.
You lucky guy! What Amazon vendor did you order from? Also...did you pull anything awesome?
We could probably kick out 2 this weekend in Doylestown. You might get people into a game of Cosmic Encounter in Games keep. I remember someone at Games Keep was looking for a game of Caverna.
I'm actually looking back at some games I enjoyed but didn't play much, like In the Year of the Dragon, Black Friday, and Die Sieben Siegel/Wizard Extreme. Maybe Outpost at Games Keep because Anthony doesn't care for it.
Cosmic Encounter isn't going anywhere, I've played it on and off for years and I don't mind missing one. I wouldn't pass up another game of Caverna, though - the last time I played was November 2014.
So... there seems to have been a massive mixup with Star Wars: Destiny ordering on Amazon. I got two starter sets ($15 each) and 3 booster packs ($3 each add-on item). I received a giant box in the mail which was confusing. It looks like I received 3 boxes of booster packs and the two starter sets.
I now have 108 booster packs.
You lucky guy! What Amazon vendor did you order from? Also...did you pull anything awesome?
I ordered straight from Amazon. I haven't opened any of them yet, I'm still deciding what to do with it all. I'll definitely open the starters and check those out but I wasn't really trying to dip in this much, so I might maybe do a draft or possibly just try and sell them. It's like $300 worth of stuff o_O
So... there seems to have been a massive mixup with Star Wars: Destiny ordering on Amazon. I got two starter sets ($15 each) and 3 booster packs ($3 each add-on item). I received a giant box in the mail which was confusing. It looks like I received 3 boxes of booster packs and the two starter sets.
I now have 108 booster packs.
You lucky guy! What Amazon vendor did you order from? Also...did you pull anything awesome?
I ordered straight from Amazon. I haven't opened any of them yet, I'm still deciding what to do with it all. I'll definitely open the starters and check those out but I wasn't really trying to dip in this much, so I might maybe do a draft or possibly just try and sell them. It's like $300 worth of stuff o_O
Yeah I would be seriously tempted to flip it. Especially since Destiny stock is low in some areas. Get that shit up on eBay ASAP before supply catches up to demand.
I'm trying to cut down on new acquisitions until I master some of the more recent purchases. I mean, I still find play in Hansa Teutonica: I'll still get surprised by the way a game of that evolves.
I'm trying to cut down on new acquisitions until I master some of the more recent purchases. I mean, I still find play in Hansa Teutonica: I'll still get surprised by the way a game of that evolves.
While Hansa Teutonica has fallen off for me, I sympathize with this. I play a lot of new games, but with the games that are "mine", I aim to have a collection of games I want to play regularly (at least once every year or so, and much more often with my favorite games). That copy of Race for the Galaxy has been used multiple times for years. I've returned to unique games like Concordia and Food Chain Magnate a lot since they came out.
I turned over a significant number of games in 2016 compared to previous years (I have been keeping track since 2012), but I suspect it will be a one-time event. I got a better sense of the kinds of games I am interested in, and let go of a number of games I either find annoying (Small World, Sentinels of the Multiverse) or don't need to control my ability to play (7 Wonders, Caylus). I also discovered a lot of older games that I totally love to play (Web of Power, Fast Food Franchise, Outpost)
Less new games this week, which I'm happy about since the Essen deluge is over. I also finally got to play Power Grid: the Card Game, which I'm enjoying more than any game since... well, 1846 last month.
Collection Played in 2016: 96%. 8 games to go. Trade Pile: TROLL, Go da Cheese, Balloon Challenge, Take the "A" Chord. Games added: Power Grid the Card Game
Legendary Encounters: Alien - I have experienced pretty extreme inconsistency between plays. I suspect certain constructions of the Barracks deck can leave you hopeless from the initial setup, which would make building an appropriate team part of the game.
Keltis: Der Weg der Steine Mitbringspiel - A forgotten game from an earlier Amazon.de order, played once and then buried at the back of a shelf. After a second play... I enjoy this more than Lost Cities. I was never a fan of Lost Cities, but the rules changes add up to a game which I find more enjoyable than its grandfather.
Power Grid: The Card Game(new to me) - Played three times this weekend, because it really grabbed me and it's so quick. You get all the normal Power Grid stuff in a 30 minute card game: manipulating turn order, pushing and delaying the endgame, and setting up for maximum plant capacity without trashing your income.
Junk Art - One of the 2016 games that has held up best to repeated plays.
Lost Valley - This is a unique game, rules that are full of little edge cases but add up to more than the sum of their parts. We played without skills or treasures this time, and it works fine (better?) without them. The rulebook presents "playing without skills and treasures" as a variant, which seems backwards.
OddVille(new to me) - Enjoyable enough as a 3p game, although the rules for distributing the guildmasters feel wobbly with more than two players. I'll need another play to decide whether that is annoying or charming.
Aton - I am enjoying Aton more than most of the 2p-only games I have played, so it earns a spot on the shelf.
Agility - Another 2p-only game, which Anthony received from a friend for Christmas. We played Rochelle's copy at PAX, and now I'm happy to have a copy in the apartment. I find it a much more enjoyable application of "collect the correct colors of money" than other recent games like Splendor, Bruges, or Fight for Olympus.
Ticket to Ride - For a game I like (but don't love, although I'm starting to wonder) I sure have played a lot of Ticket to Ride. The only games I learned in 2012 that I continue to play this frequently are Carcassonne and Race for the Galaxy.
I didn't play any games over the Christmas holiday, but we did play a lot of games immediately before and after the Christmas holiday.
Carcassonne: the City(new to me) - Anthony's Christmas gift! I suspect the only reason this hasn't seen a reprint in the past decade is all the custom wooden pieces. It changes more of Carcassonne's rules than usual but still feels like Carcassonne, and the completed city with the walls looks very striking. I like it.
Fresco(new to me) - Another one of Anthony's Christmas gifts. If you consider "points that cost different colors of money" as a genre, here's another one I enjoy more than Splendor...
Tigris & Euphrates - My clever use of a catastrophe to steal 6 black followers was immediately negated by order of operations on an external conflict. You can't win 'em all. With the attention we got after playing this on Friday, maybe my new years resolution should be "play more T&E in 2017."
Lorenzo il Magnifico(new to me) - A game that shares designers with The Voyages of Marco Polo and especially Grand Austria Hotel, with an annoying worker placement mechanism that quickly fills the board with expensive spaces. Grand Austria Hotel is a favorite, but Lorenzo was a miss for me.
Adrenaline(new to me) - Pick up mostly-thematic weapons and sling them around using a mostly-abstract resource management system. It's a close comparison to The Battle at Kemble's Cascade, but Adrenaline works better and is more enjoyable.
1846 - A 3p game where I ended up running three corps because everyone shied away from starting the last corporation. I may have done better if I hadn't issued two of Grand Trunk's near-worthless shares into the market in OR1, among countless other things.
Bonus: My friend Dan made this amazing retheme of Friedemann Freise's Foppen and gave it to me for Christmas. It's even more stunning in person, and it's coming with me to MAGFest.
I played the game once, without the cards, and I really enjoyed it. Curious to see if our experiences line up. The top 2/3 of each column are indeed crazy expensive worker placement spaces, but I enjoyed the puzzle of how to vault myself into one of them every turn.
I played the game once, without the cards, and I really enjoyed it. Curious to see if our experiences line up. The top 2/3 of each column are indeed crazy expensive worker placement spaces, but I enjoyed the puzzle of how to vault myself into one of them every turn.
Lorenzo cards were included, and drafted ala the starting hand of helpers in Grand Austria Hotel. Many of them were discarded for indulgences.
My friends and I finished Pandemic Legacy last night. We felt the final "month" was both anticlimactic and overly difficult, leaving us slightly frustrated and let-down at a game that we had eagerly played and greatly enjoyed up until then.
All in all, though, it provided upwards of 25 of hours of entertainment, and got us to hang out more consistently throughout 2016 than we had in a few years, so absolutely worth it.
Comments
I now have 108 booster packs.
Cosmic Encounter isn't going anywhere, I've played it on and off for years and I don't mind missing one. I wouldn't pass up another game of Caverna, though - the last time I played was November 2014.
I turned over a significant number of games in 2016 compared to previous years (I have been keeping track since 2012), but I suspect it will be a one-time event. I got a better sense of the kinds of games I am interested in, and let go of a number of games I either find annoying (Small World, Sentinels of the Multiverse) or don't need to control my ability to play (7 Wonders, Caylus). I also discovered a lot of older games that I totally love to play (Web of Power, Fast Food Franchise, Outpost)
Collection Played in 2016: 96%. 8 games to go. Trade Pile: TROLL, Go da Cheese, Balloon Challenge, Take the "A" Chord. Games added: Power Grid the Card Game
Legendary Encounters: Alien - I have experienced pretty extreme inconsistency between plays. I suspect certain constructions of the Barracks deck can leave you hopeless from the initial setup, which would make building an appropriate team part of the game.
Keltis: Der Weg der Steine Mitbringspiel - A forgotten game from an earlier Amazon.de order, played once and then buried at the back of a shelf. After a second play... I enjoy this more than Lost Cities. I was never a fan of Lost Cities, but the rules changes add up to a game which I find more enjoyable than its grandfather.
Power Grid: The Card Game (new to me) - Played three times this weekend, because it really grabbed me and it's so quick. You get all the normal Power Grid stuff in a 30 minute card game: manipulating turn order, pushing and delaying the endgame, and setting up for maximum plant capacity without trashing your income.
Junk Art - One of the 2016 games that has held up best to repeated plays.
Lost Valley - This is a unique game, rules that are full of little edge cases but add up to more than the sum of their parts. We played without skills or treasures this time, and it works fine (better?) without them. The rulebook presents "playing without skills and treasures" as a variant, which seems backwards.
OddVille (new to me) - Enjoyable enough as a 3p game, although the rules for distributing the guildmasters feel wobbly with more than two players. I'll need another play to decide whether that is annoying or charming.
Aton - I am enjoying Aton more than most of the 2p-only games I have played, so it earns a spot on the shelf.
Agility - Another 2p-only game, which Anthony received from a friend for Christmas. We played Rochelle's copy at PAX, and now I'm happy to have a copy in the apartment. I find it a much more enjoyable application of "collect the correct colors of money" than other recent games like Splendor, Bruges, or Fight for Olympus.
Ticket to Ride - For a game I like (but don't love, although I'm starting to wonder) I sure have played a lot of Ticket to Ride. The only games I learned in 2012 that I continue to play this frequently are Carcassonne and Race for the Galaxy.
Carcassonne: the City (new to me) - Anthony's Christmas gift! I suspect the only reason this hasn't seen a reprint in the past decade is all the custom wooden pieces. It changes more of Carcassonne's rules than usual but still feels like Carcassonne, and the completed city with the walls looks very striking. I like it.
Fresco (new to me) - Another one of Anthony's Christmas gifts. If you consider "points that cost different colors of money" as a genre, here's another one I enjoy more than Splendor...
Tigris & Euphrates - My clever use of a catastrophe to steal 6 black followers was immediately negated by order of operations on an external conflict. You can't win 'em all. With the attention we got after playing this on Friday, maybe my new years resolution should be "play more T&E in 2017."
Lorenzo il Magnifico (new to me) - A game that shares designers with The Voyages of Marco Polo and especially Grand Austria Hotel, with an annoying worker placement mechanism that quickly fills the board with expensive spaces. Grand Austria Hotel is a favorite, but Lorenzo was a miss for me.
Adrenaline (new to me) - Pick up mostly-thematic weapons and sling them around using a mostly-abstract resource management system. It's a close comparison to The Battle at Kemble's Cascade, but Adrenaline works better and is more enjoyable.
1846 - A 3p game where I ended up running three corps because everyone shied away from starting the last corporation. I may have done better if I hadn't issued two of Grand Trunk's near-worthless shares into the market in OR1, among countless other things.
Bonus: My friend Dan made this amazing retheme of Friedemann Freise's Foppen and gave it to me for Christmas. It's even more stunning in person, and it's coming with me to MAGFest.
I played the game once, without the cards, and I really enjoyed it. Curious to see if our experiences line up. The top 2/3 of each column are indeed crazy expensive worker placement spaces, but I enjoyed the puzzle of how to vault myself into one of them every turn.
All in all, though, it provided upwards of 25 of hours of entertainment, and got us to hang out more consistently throughout 2016 than we had in a few years, so absolutely worth it.